UAW voices cry for militancy

RICK POPELYCHICAGO TRIBUNE

By most accounts, the United Auto Workers union has its back against the wall, facing the consequences of the potential sale of Chrysler Group amid expectations it will grant major concessions in contract talks with automakers just to survive.

But some UAW members are in no mood to give up anything and are challenging their leaders to fight to restore wage and health-care concessions in the next contract, which takes effect in September.

"We've trained a generation of union leaders to be cooperative, and they don't know how to fight back," said Paul Baxter, a 28-year UAW member from Zilwaukee, Mich. "We've lost our militancy."

Baxter said such cooperation, supposedly aimed at saving jobs, has become a "one-way street" that erodes union jobs, including more than 50,000 last year. The UAW's membership has fallen to about 500,000, down 116,000 from the end of 2004 and only one-third its size in 1979.

"We're actually cooperating in our own demise. Our leaders are far removed from the realities of the workplace," Baxter said. "Whatever the company says we need to do, the union goes along with it. We've become an enabler, like someone who enables an alcoholic to keep drinking."

Such a dissident voice is in sharp contrast to the UAW's typical solidarity. Union President Ron Gettelfinger usually does most of the talking, and many members are afraid to publicly disagree with union policies for the same reasons white-collar workers seldom air gripes against their employers: They fear it will mark them as malcontents and lessen their chances for promotions or choice assignments within the union.

"Part of the union is clearly broken, and a lot more is under threat," said Mike Parker, a skilled trades worker at a Chrysler plant in Sterling Heights, Mich. "There's a lot of discontent with what's going on among the membership. They feel alienated from the union and the company."

Adds Greg Shotwell, a UAW activist at a General Motors plant in Lansing, Mich., "The rank-and-file members on the shop floor are just getting fed up. Many people are afraid to speak up. If 10 people are rocking the boat, another 100 are saying, 'Yeah, yeah. You're right.' "

Gettelfinger opened a recent UAW convention with a fiery speech that called for national health care, an end to "obscene executive compensation" while blue-collar workers lose jobs and a halt to outsourcing jobs to low-wage countries. He said the union is prepared for tough negotiations this summer.

"Where we have demonstrated cooperation, it would be a grave mistake to equate our action to capitulation," Gettelfinger said in his speech.

UAW members such as Gary Walkowicz, who works at a Ford assembly plant in Dearborn, Mich., have heard rhetoric like that before and said the union hasn't kept its promise.

"We have to draw a line in the sand and give no more concessions," he said. "I really believe that is where a lot of members are today who think things are going the wrong way. It just may not have bubbled up to the surface yet."

Walkowicz and some co-workers circulated petitions at the Dearborn plant recently that called for a halt to concessions and obtained signatures from 1,000 workers in four days. Workers at other plants heard about the petition, and 1,000 more active and retired UAW members signed it.

The UAW reopened the Ford and GM contracts in 2005 to shift more health-care costs to workers, who gave up a $1 wage increase and agreed to raise their co-pay for prescription drugs.

Out-of-pocket expenses for retirees went up as much as $750 per year because they started paying premiums. Walkowicz, 57, says that was a dangerous precedent because it means retirement benefits are no longer guaranteed. That's a big reason he hasn't retired, though he is eligible with 32 years of service.

"It really opened the door for much further cuts in the future," he said. "It's not safe to retire any more. The pension and health care may not be there."

The current contract, in effect since 2003, allows automakers to replace some departing UAW workers who make about $27 an hour with new ones who start at $18 an hour. At supplier Delphi Corp., which is in bankruptcy, replacements start at $14.

"The two-tier [wage structure] opened the floodgate to concessions. Everywhere there is two-tier, there's a divided union and chaos," said Todd Jordan, who works at a Delphi plant in Kokomo, Ind., and is a leader of Soldiers of Solidarity, a dissident UAW group formed after Delphi filed for bankruptcy.

"We're no longer a union in a sense. It's run like a business, not a union," Jordan said. "We feel the UAW is going into the negotiations in a concessionary mode. They're almost like the human resources [office] for the Big Three."